BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM-Chapter 1297 - The bugs (23)
1297: The bugs (23)
1297: The bugs (23)
The queen charged at Erik with unbridled rage.
Despite her size, she moved impressively fast, but it wasn’t weird considering how high her strength attribute was.
While she was strong, though, she was also heavy, since each step she took made the ground below her crack.
Erik used his Will of the Hydra.
There were three of them, so Erik had up to four brains through which he could think and divide tasks.
One focused on defense, another on offense, and the third on analyzing the queen’s movements and coordinating his overall strategy, while he himself kept an eye on his friends and clones.
“She’s faster than I expected,” Erik said through the radio as he avoided the bug queen’s attacks using telekinesis.
He lifted him out of harm’s way, as there was no way he could keep up with her pace with his strength alone.
He also understood why telekinesis was so powerful and how Uncle Benjamin had been able to reach the Blackguards’ highest ranks.
The queen’s mandibles crashed together below him, where he had stood some moments before.
“Shit…”
Erik barely avoided it.
Since the queen had presented herself on a silver plate, though, Erik sent a barrage of lightning bolts towards her.
The discharge from his elemental Lord brain crystal power struck her carapace, creating a flash of light that illuminated the entire cave.
The queen screeched as the current danced across her armored shell.
Most of the bolts dissipated on it, but some seeped into her flesh and electrocuted her.
However, it wasn’t enough.
The queen’s natural mana armor dissipated the rest, severely reducing the effects of Erik’s power.
Yet she staggered momentarily.
Erik landed on a broken pillar.
The queen recovered fast, turning toward him and locking her eyes on the human.
“Standard elemental attacks aren’t working.”
“What’s your plan?” Mira asked as she continued firing arrows into the swarm of lesser bugs.
“I need to find a weakness in her defenses.” He paused.
“How are things going for you?”
Mira knocked another arrow and killed another bug.
“The number of enemies is increasing, but we are managing.
The problem is that things keep going like this.
We are going to be overwhelmed.”
Erik had no time to reply because the queen reared back, her thorax contracting.
Erik was using instability to see what the queen wanted to do since the battle had started and found himself in need of activating Absolute Wall.
A barrier materialized before him just as the queen sprayed corrosive acid in his direction.
The acid struck the barrier, sizzling against the mana surface.
The barrier held, but Erik could sense its integrity weakening at a fast pace.
“What the fuck is this?”
Erik got another look at the queen’s thoughts.
Unlike humans, the queen’s alien thinking patterns were hard to interpret, but they were undoubtedly complex.
Somehow, he picked up what she planned to do.
“She wants to flank me,” Erik said.
“She’s surely smarter than she looks.”
As if to confirm his words, the queen changed direction mid-charge.
Instead of going directly into Erik’s position, she circled around his barrier.
Erik used telekinesis to propel himself away from the pillar just as the queen got past the barrier and launched herself toward him. frёewebnoѵēl.com
“Oh, shit!” Erik saw what she was thinking.
The queen spit her acid once again.
Erik didn’t have the time to create another barrier, not that it would have lasted, anyway.
Luckily, Erik had his armor on, and he created some barriers right in front of him at the start of the battle.
The spray collided with them and fell to the ground, but some splashes ended up hitting him.
The armor held, but a little of the acid reached his shoulder.
“AH!
DAMN!”
His control over telekinesis didn’t waver since he had the hydra’s heads taking care of it, but he found himself in a tough spot.
[Your upper left shoulder is injured.
The acid penetrated approximately 2.8 centimeters.
No major arteries affected.]
<How the hell do I fight something that fast?>
[Start attacking instead of staying on the defensive.]
<Do you think it’s easy?>
Erik gritted his teeth, fighting through the pain.
“Erik!” Amber’s concerned voice came through the radio.
“Are you ok?”
“She got me, but it’s nothing critical.
Focus on your task.
I’m fine.”
Erik used Rejuvenating Touch to heal his wound.
He didn’t even have to use a lot of mana.
However, Absolute Castle required quite a bit to stop the acid from melting Erik’s entire arm.
The queen was chasing the human like the beast she was, her mandibles clicking in what seemed like satisfaction at drawing blood.
Erik kept flying.
The battle now moved away from the Silver Line Corporation’s building.
Partly because Erik did it on purpose and partly because of circumstances.
If he was outside, he would have killed the queen rather easily, provided no flying thaids saw him.
There was a limit to what her body could do, and with all the mana he had, he could have made his attacks faster and more devastating.
The queen would also have had problems moving.
She was taking advantage of the cave and the structure to fight a 3D battle.
She didn’t just move forward or backward, but also up, scaling the building and running on the cave walls.
In open space, she would not have been able to do it.
At the same time, inside the underground city, Erik couldn’t fly as much as he needed and had to actually tone down his powers to avoid precious hints about the corporation being destroyed.
<Is there a chance I might be able to lure her away?>
[No.
She is too smart to fall for it; she knows she has an advantage inside the cave.]
<Fuck!>
A group of warrior bugs broke away from the main swarm, climbing the walls of surrounding structures to reach Erik’s height.
Soon they started spitting acid at Erik, who was forced to avoid a rain of matter-dissolving liquids.
Erik divided his consciousness further, using Will of the Hydra to split his focus four ways now.
He coordinated his defenses, attacks, and analysis and monitored the approaching warriors.
“Guys!” He said amidst evasion moves.
“Stop those fuckers!”
“Sorry!”
<Damn… I need to take control of this battlefield.>
[What were you thinking?]
<As if you don’t know it already.>
He channeled mana into Verdant Architect’s neural links.
If the queen was too fast, he only needed to restrain her.
Mana surged through the ground beneath the queen, causing massive vines to erupt from the cracks in the ancient courtyard.
The plants grew at an unnatural rate, thickening and hardening.
They wrapped around the queen’s legs.
“Gotcha, bitch!”
However, the vines lasted just for a couple of seconds.
The queen’s raw physical power tore them apart.
“What the…?”
The Hydra’s heads kept thinking as Erik’s main consciousness got flabbergasted.
He used the momentary advantage to launch a concentrated attack.
Fire and lightning merged in his hands.
“Take this, you bastard!”
The superheated plasma struck, the combined elements bypassing her defenses and burning through sections of her carapace.
The queen shrieked, a sound so piercing that several windows in the surrounding buildings shattered.
Her struggle against the vines intensified, fueled by pain and rage.
“I think I found a way,” Erik said.
Erik kept attacking the queen, switching between extreme heat and cold on the same spots of her body.
This sudden change in temperature made cracks form in her outer shell.
However, the warrior bugs reached Erik’s height, launching themselves toward him from various angles, while others, at the same time, kept spitting acid on him.
Erik redirected some of his focus, creating wind blades that sliced through the attackers.
Their bodies fell to the courtyard below, adding to the growing pile of bug corpses.
[Bellator thanatocoleoptera killed: mana-absorbing process starting.]
[Bellator thanatocoleoptera killed: mana-absorbing process starting.]
[Bellator thanatocoleoptera killed: mana-absorbing process starting.]
[Bellator thanatocoleoptera killed: mana-absorbing process starting.]
